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Compliance

This section focuses on health care compliance and regulations – both national and state – including the ACA. It includes changes in health care law, regulation, and court decisions and their impact on health insurance professionals, employers, and individuals.

Hospitals Said They Lost Money on Medicare Patients. Some Made Millions, a State Report Finds.

Atrium Health, the largest hospital system in North Carolina, has declared publicly that in 2019 it provided $640 million in services to Medicare patients that were never paid for, by far the largest “community benefit” it provided that year. Like other nonprofit hospitals around the nation, Atrium logs losses on the federal health insurance program ...

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Inflation Is Near A Four-Decade High. So Why Aren't Health Care Costs Significantly Higher?

As consumers choose a 2023 health insurance plan from employers in coming weeks, many will find rate hikes are modest when compared to everyday living expenses. It’s the first time in over three decades that overall inflation accelerated at a faster rate than medical costs.

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New Biden Order Wants CMMI To Test Payment Models That Tackle High Drug Prices

President Joe Biden is calling for new payment and delivery models that will lower drug prices in a new executive order. The order released Friday calls on the Department of Health and Human Services to craft a report outlining the payment models that will test how to improve access to innovative drugs and lower costs for those ...

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Walgreens Targeting Tech Acquisition As It Looks To Scale Healthcare Business Unit

Retail drugstore giant Walgreens is bullish on scaling up its primary, post-acute and home care businesses as part of its long-term strategy to become a consumer-centric healthcare company. “We are rapidly scaling U.S. healthcare, already raising long-term sales targets with a clear path to achieve profitability, starting in fiscal year ’24,” Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer said last ...

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After Congress Fails to Add Dental Coverage, Medicare Weighs Limited Benefit Expansion

Proposed changes in Medicare rules could soon pave the way for a significant expansion in Medicare-covered dental services, while falling short of the comprehensive benefits that many Democratic lawmakers have advocated. That’s because, under current law, Medicare can pay for limited dental care only if it is medically necessary to safely treat another covered medical ...

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Listen Up: You Can Now Buy Hearing Aids Without A Prescription

The government on Monday will begin allowing pharmacies and big-box stores to sell hearing aids without prescriptions, a move that is expected to shake up an industry that has long been dominated by a handful of manufacturers under a model of care that critics said raised costs and stifled innovation. Backers of the change say ...

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US Health Insurance Prices Went Up Nearly 30% Over The Past Year

Health insurance prices reported their highest yearly annual increase since the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began posting them in 2005. According to the latest data, published on Oct. 13 (pdf), the price of health insurance increased 28.2% from September 2021 to September 2022. That is one of the steepest increases of all products tracked by ...

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More Than 1.3M Americans Ration Life-Saving Insulin Due To Cost. That's 'Very Worrisome' To Doctors.

More than 1.3 million American adults with diabetes skipped doses, delayed buying or otherwise rationed doses of insulin due to escalating cost of the life-saving medication, a new study found. A study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine estimated 16.5% of adults with diabetes who are dependent on insulin did not take full doses as prescribed due ...

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Biden Administration Finalizes Obamacare 'Family Glitch' Fix

The Biden administration on Tuesday finalized a rule it said would fix the so-called family glitch in the Affordable Care Act that priced many people out of health insurance and would help over a million Americans.

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Americans Have Largely Avoided Health Care Inflation So Far – But That’s About To Change

Although Americans have been paying a lot more at the pump and the supermarket this year, they have largely been spared from price hikes for their job-based health insurance and doctor visits. But that’s about to change.

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